1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to management of a communications apparatus. This invention is suitably applicable for example to initial settings by a management device on a network device such as a hub and a router connected to a network.
2. Description of the Related Technology
The widespread use of local area networks (LANs) and wide area networks (WANs) in recent years has allowed a great many personal computers (hereinafter referred to as PCs), hubs, switches, routers and other types of network devices (among which an intelligent hub or the like may be called “agent”) to get connected to networks and subnetworks thereof, where information is shared and transmitted in high traffic volume. Distributed environments in management of configuration, performance, security, and billing in the network make it difficult and costly to locate possible problems. Therefore, there has arisen a need for centralized management of network status conditions.
In order to perform network management, a management device (which may also be called “manager” or “server”) monitors a connection status and traffic in network devices. The management device obtains communication parameters and other information pertaining to the network devices, and sets management information on the network devices. The communication parameters, which can include IP (Internet Protocol) addresses and the like, are used to enable communications capabilities of a network device, and to make the network device manageable to the manager. The management information is used to manage the network device, and includes information common to all the network devices and information unique to the types of the network devices. In the description of the present application, the initial setting of the management information may in some instances be referred to as “initial configuration”.
Among conventionally proposed methods for setting communication parameters on the network device has been a manual setting using serial data communications. This is a method in which a terminal is connected with a target agent via an RS-232C interface so as to enter commands for directly setting communication parameters. However, where tens or hundreds of network devices are connected to the network, as in recent network environments which include increased capabilities of LANs and WANs, the configuration load becomes burdensome. Accordingly, another method using communications protocols such as BOOTP (BOOTstrap Protocol), DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol), TFTP (Trivial File Transfer Protocol) has been proposed in which a server (e.g., DHCP server) automatically sets the communication parameters upon startup. The management device is in many instances provided independently of the DHCP server for the purpose of distributing the DHCP servers that set IP addresses and the like.
Conventionally, however, the initial setting of the network device is not so easy. An initial configuration file might conceivably be transferred to the network device through BOOTP, DHCP, and TFTP in combination, but each network device could not be identified through these protocols. Therefore, in such an environment where different types of apparatuses coexist, management information unique to the network device could not be set. On the other hand, a MAC (Media Access Control) address of each apparatus could be manually input in the management device, and the management information unique to the apparatus could be set based upon the MAC address. However, inputting the MAC addresses is burdensome, and when the apparatus fails and is replaced, its MAC address also changes. Thus, a new MAC address would need to be input into the network configuration information.
Accordingly, the present invention addresses the need for a method and system for performing an initial setting on a network device with relative ease.